Honey Lemon

I am proud to say I can choose a good lemon 90% of the time. My definition of a lemon is one that is citrusy but with a tinge of sweetness. 

The trick is to look for a rounder lemon, rather than the usual one with pointed ends. Next, look for one that does not feel too hard. There are lemons which are really hard and simply refuse to budge even when you really press it. You want to get one which would yield to your pressing, but yet still firm. 

I am a fan of hot lemon water. And a good lemon is essential to a cup of hot lemon water. 

I am sure there are plenty of benefits to a mug of hot lemon water, but I just like it for the taste and smell of it. Ya, sometimes, I am that superficial ;>

I had a pretty bad case of congested chest recently, and it is still lingering. I do not like this feeling for the most obvious reason - it feels too familiar to pnuemothorax. The same chesty cough and the same suppressed breathing. It made me worry enough to have an x ray taken...

With google, I think a lot of people has started to self medicate, and so have I :) Glad to find out lemon and honey can help to expectorate phlegm! I am not a sugar person, but honey I can live with. Apparently, the mixture is good for sore throat and cough too. 

Talk about good luck, my mother-in-law somehow bought us some honey when we went back to Batu for our long overdue home trip! Wonder of the law of attraction :)

Stuff you would need for two, three weeks of supply:

• A jar that has a rubber seal or use a good mason jar. I usually get mine from Ikea - the type that has a rubber seal to prevent leakage 
• Two lemons
• Honey

Clean your lemon well - brush it, scrub it. Make sure the skin is clean because we are keeping the skin. Thereafter, slice it up. I like to slice it as thin as I can, so that the marinating can be more thorough. Cut it however you like it - one full slice or half it. I do a bit of both, just to make sure I can stuff the halves into corners to make full use of the honey.

As I start to stack the lemon it, I would drizzle some honey along the way. Then I would lay more lemon slices and drizzle more. I like it this way, than top load when all the lemon slices are stacked in. 

Once all slices are in, I would drizzle more honey over the lemon slices. By the time I am done, I can see the lemon juices and honey hovering at about 1/3 of the jar. Somehow lemon juice would start to fill up close to half of the jar when I am done, even though no squeezing is involved. 

I let it sit for about 2, 3 days in the fridge, turning it upside down whenever I open the fridge to just mix it up properly. Hence the need for a lid with a good rubber seal. 

After about a month or two, the entire mixture turns a bit gooey. I scoop it out and mix it with warm water. You can take it with cold water or tea too. Take care not to mix it with water that is too hot. It would end up destroying the properties of the honey. 

Lemon has a beautiful chinese name - 宜母果. It simply means "beneficial fruit for the mother". This is mainly because of the vitamins and nutrients in a lemon, plus the sourness that a mom-to-be would really appreciate!

Pumpkin Salad

I came to love pumpkin only at much later part of my life, in fact just about three years ago. This is after a friend introduced me to the roasted pumpkin salad at Soup Spoon. I was so disappointed when they took the item off their menu.

So I decided to make it myself :)

And I love it to bits! It is easy to make and it looks pretty before I start eating it, haha! This is what I would have for lunch at least 2, 3 times a week when I am in KL. I would buy half a pumpkin during the weekend, slice everything up into big cubes and cook them over the next five days starting from the first day of the working week. It is easy for me because lunch is just me, and I like to keep it simple and fuss free so that I do not need to do too much of cleaning since I am working. Yes, even though I work from home when I am in KL, I am still working. 

The steps are really simple, and the below portion should be good for three servings:

• Skin half a pumpkin, de-seed it and cut it up into big cubes. Keep the cubes big, at least 3cm all around cube would be good. I sometimes cut it slightly bigger. If it is too small, you would run into the problem of soggy pumpkin, which I feel doesn't work well for this salad. 

• Boil half a pot of water and decide how much of pumpkin cubes you would like to have, and place the rest into a air tight container and leave it into the fridge for another day. 

• When the water boils, dump the cubes in. Once the water starts to boil again, leave it boiling for another two minutes. Use a fork to test the softness of the pumpkin. The fork should face just a tiny bit of resistance, going in and coming out easily. 

• Ladle out the pumpkin. Thereafter, this is the part that I do for myself and the environment - I leave the water one side and wash up the rice I need for the evening, and pour in the amount of pumpkin water that I need to cook the rice, which is usually pretty much everything. If there is still left over after the rice, I use the rest of the pumpkin water to cook my vege dishes. The rice tastes sweeter and has a slight fragrance that hubby and I both like. 

• This step is not a must, it is optional. You can roast the pumpkin for about 20 minutes to have that roasted taste. Usually I would throw something that is meant for the dinner into the oven too just so that I maximise out the electricity. If it is something that has a strong smell, I would usually wrap it up in a foil first before throwing it into the oven. The foil is good to keep the moist in the food. 

• If you prefer not to roast the pumpkin, you can go straight to setting up the salad. Throw in the salad leaves you like, fresh spinach or those salad boxes that you can get from the supermarket. Throw in some seeds, like pumpkin and sunflower seeds, goji berries, cherry tomatoes, corns. I sometimes pluck some of the basil leaves from our tiny garden to stir up some taste buds. I had once threw in those super thin strips of salted fish after the dressing, and mind you, it went well too, haha! You can use any dressing you like, but I always take it with balsamic vinegar. You can throw in some toast if you like, but make sure you do that only after the dressing. 

I would usually have a big bowl of this salad, which is the size of the bowl that is used to serve soup. This portion is generally good to keep my stomach happy for about 4, 5 hours. If I am especially hungry that day, I would throw in a few more cubes just to make sure I can last till dinner. 

I have never add fruits to my salad, because fruits and vegetables together at the same time usually gives me gas. If you do not have this problem, I think pineapple would be a great item to add in :)

Enjoy!

Aloe Vera Summer Treat!

It has been smouldering hot for the last couple of weeks! Cold drink is not my thing, even in this hot weather. Occasional sip or a can that I share with my hubby, that is about it. 

We have this huge aloe vera in KL home, and the baby shoot that we planted next to the "mother" is growing pretty well too. The mother plant is really getting huge, and that day I decided to can up some aloe as treats for the hot weather since constant "ice-creaming" is not really a choice, even in this hot weather. 

Steps are pretty straight forward, just one step of prep work, and we would be roaring to go!

• Get a slice of aloe vera from your garden or the market. Slice off a small portion of the bottom of the leave and leave it standing on a mug or bowl for at least two hours. I usually cut mine from the garden in the evening after dinner and leave it to stand till the following morning. This would help to drain off the sap that causes the bitterness. 

• Cut off the lower portion of the leaf where the yellowish-brownish sap sticks to after the standing. Slice along the edges to remove the thorns and start to slice off the leave in any fashion that works best for you, and leave you with just the centre aloe vera pulp. 

• Rinse the aloe vera pulp slightly, the gel is fine. Throw all the pulp into a container, squeeze half a fresh lemon in and stir well. Adjust the lemony taste to your preference. Honey and mint leave can also be added. For those who like slightly stronger tea like earl grey, make half a cup of concentrated tea. After it cools, add in and stir well. Add and minus the flavouring (lemon, honey, mint leave etc) according to your preference. 

• Leave it overnight in the fridge for the aloe vera pulp to absorb the flavour. Thereafter, eat it on its own. Or add some to a glass of ice tea!

This can be a very healthy treat as long as honey is not being ladle in. Try to work with small spoon, and not use sugar. If honey is added, your tea would be sweetened too. I like to add some of these to my hot tea too :) 

Enjoy!

Easy Peasy Pasta aka Lazy Lunch / Dinner

I like instant noodles, but it is just too salty. For the same reason, I take very little of the instant bee hoon too, even though I would really love to have it for all my lunches.

And today, I think I found a healthier substitute :) Takes less than 10 minutes  to prepare, perhaps a couple more minutes and a bit more work but it is definitely worth it. Cooking this doesn't take too long and would not set off the thinking that going through the process gives second thoughts. 

Angel hair pasta!

I know angel hair pasta is always there, next to spaghetti and linguine, but I seldom pay any attention to it. Until today :D

This is my lazy lunch recipe: 

1. Set a pot of water to boil. Add a bit of salt and olive oil to the water for taste and texture. (2 min)
2. Start to cut some broccoli up while waiting for the water to boil.
3. Once the water boils, put the broccoli in. Once it is cooked, get it out of the water and onto the plate that you would be eating with. (3 min)
4. Take sufficient angel hair pasta and put it into the same pot of boiling water, and wait for it to be cooked. (3 min)
5. While waiting, open a tin of tuna and scope out any amount of tuna preferred. 
6. Still waiting for the pasta to be cooked, get ready the pasta sauce, which is basically opening a bottle of it and stand by the spoon. 
7. Scope the cooked pasta onto the plate, which holds the broccoli and the tuna. (1 min)
8. Spoon the pasta sauce over the pasta. Eat!

Angel hair pasta cooks a lot faster compare to linguine, the pasta that I usually like. Linguine takes about 12 min to cook, and angel hair takes only about three minutes! I can add another veggie, like pre cut pumpkin (hmm...seems like a wrong combi) or a sunny side up, to replace the tuna if I want. It should not take too much time too. 

The choice of pasta sauce is rather limited though, and I might need to stick to tomato pasta sauce since sauces like carbonara would need to be heat up separately. Or I can drizzle in a bit of olive oil. If I do this, then I would skip the olive oil in the beginning. I can also sprinkle in some pumpkin and sunflower seeds! 

Bon Appetit! 

Tremella Dessert

I love tremella for its crunchiness, chewiness and versatility. I can boil soup with it, cook it with the dishes or make a dessert out of it. Tremella is also known as snow fungus, in chinese as 银耳 or 白木耳. It is said to nourish both the lungs and skin.  

I usually cut tremella into smaller pieces after soaking it. I thought of chopping it up into really small pieces so that it easier to have it as a soup-in-a-cup instead of using a bowl. And it turned out quite nicely! Since I have not exactly share a food post before, I thought I would share the recipe here.

Very simple to make, preparation time is less than 20 minutes if you have all the ingredients and boiling time is about 10 minutes if you use a thermal pot.

Ingredients:

• 10 gram of tremella.  
• 30 gram of honey rock sugar or known as 石峰糖 in Chinese.
• 30 gram of dried longan.
• Few pieces of Lilium or known as 百合 in chinese
• Few pieces of wolfberries
• 1, 2 pieces of figs 
• 1.2 litre of water

You should be able to get the ingredients from a chinese herbal shop quite easily. Wash all ingredients except for the tremella and honey rock sugar. Bring the water to boil in a pot while you process the ingredients. 

Method: 

Process the tremella with a food processor until fine pieces. I prefer not to wash it until it is processed. Once wash or soak, tremella would absorb the water and expand. I like to handle it dry and to wash it once I am ready to boil it together with the rest of the ingredients. 

Place the processed tremella into a big sieve and rinse it under running water for a few times until the tremella expands and feels spongy. 

Turn down the fire to the smallest mode available. Add in the honey rock sugar, figs and longan into the boiling water. Stir occasionally until the honey rock sugar dissolves. The water should look slightly golden by now. This should take only a few minutes. Add in the washed tremella, leaving wolfberries to the last.

Turn up to medium fire to boil the mixture for about 5 minutes before placing it into the thermal pot. Leave it in the thermal pot for about 20 to 30 minutes and it is ready!

I like to have it hot and hubby likes it cold. If you are going to have it cold, it might be better to wait for it to cool down before adding ice. If your tremella is processed to really fine bits, you can even have it with a straw!

You can vary the taste by adding in more longan for extra fragrance, more fig for sweetness, more tremella for a thicker texture. Enjoy!